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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5526048" data-attributes="member: 4937">To be honest, this is what I had expected to happen.  I expected it not only because it was the noble thing to do, but because it was the practical thing to do.  Healed up, the cult leader could have potentially provided significant clues and insight.  With her dead and with several other oppurtunities for clue gathering missed or overlooked, the party was left with few leads to work with and is still mostly in the dark about the nature of their foe.  In fact, they'd have been completely in the dark were it not for the actions of an intelligent NPC (which almost felt like cheating to me) they had with them.  However, that's not what happened.  Instead the Chaotic Neutral trending Chaotic Evil character decided in a fit of vengence to finish off the unconscious and bleeding foe.   To be sure, at this point the villain had been responcible for murdering a group of innocent priests, wide spread arson resulting in the death of scores of people, and setting lose a goblin war  party in the city, plus had just killed a well like NPC right in front of them as well as single handedly nearly killing the whole party after a wild fight and chase around a massive foundry complex that had lasted more than 10 minutes and involved probably 20+ rounds of combat.  So they had plenty of reason to be emotionally worked up and hate the villain.   However, there was no argument or discussion about the coup de grace.  The mitigating factor here is that even the 'good guys' in the town would have barely treated her any better and arguably worse once they'd learned she was a witch (a sorcerer).  Ordinary commoners and experts (most of the town in otherwords) have pretty much no chance of dealing with high level arcane spellcasters unless they are absolutely ruthless.  As such, society has evolved standards of behavior with respect to evil spellcasters that are extreme by any sort of real world standard, but in the real world we don't have to deal with individuals who have earth shattering power even when unarmed and imprisoned.  Sorcerers in particular are often treated very inhumanely because you can't cripple them by just taking away their books and reagents.   The wider society lives in pretty much utter terror of things like Charm Person and Bestow Curse, and magistrates generally consider it their higher duty to protect the public from abusive spellcasters regardless of the moral cost or niceties.   Magistrates don't usually bother with taking spellcasters in.  They poison them in their sleep, because they know that one spell might well wipe out most of the watch.So, in other words, if they healed the cult leader and then turned her over to the authorities, the most likely result would have been that they'd have broken her fingers with a hammer and pulled her tongue out with hot iron tongs before some sort of speedy trial followed by painful public execution (usually burned alive).  Considering the damage inflicted on the town and the fact that much of the clergy that might have preached mercy were dead, there wouldn't have been many voices of protest against that.   It would have been considered justice, albiet of the rough sort necessary when dealing with witches, necromancers, diabolists and the like.This situation seems to me to constrain the good aligned dieties that are otherwise mourning the tragedy that occurred here since they at least know the costs and griefs that lead to this point.  But what are they going to advise their followers (the PC's) to do that isn't meaningless hide bound instruction?   How can they head off this habit the party has gotten into in a productive manner?   Which is the same as, how can I head off this habit the party has gotten into in a productive manner (since I don't want a dumb alignment argument to derail play)?</blockquote>

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